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Re: Spend too much time doing masking of images?

To keep up with such competition is getting harder and harder and from time to time makes me wonder when I will be sacked and out of job, because I am too expensive.

And the irony is that you are recommending services that helps that happen!

The global economy is difficullt. I guess it averages out over time, but transition is painful. I guess it's always been painful in the developing world and we in the west are coming to appreciate what painful is. Many of my former co-workers have now been replaced by outsourced labour with development shifted to the east.

Re: Spend too much time doing masking of images?

Hi Sten,

You raised some interesting and relevant points about this subject. A lot of the work sourced out to places like India and China is tedious, repetitive, and often involves blatant copying. Many Chinese and Indian parents send their children to Western universities for education. When it comes to art, the main creative backbone is almost impossible to outsource. If a director in Hollywood needs a great script, he won’t be going to India. If a design agency in London needs great designs, they won’t be going to China. On the other hand they would be glad to let a building full of Indians produce their masking.

At the moment if you hire Indian designers to do logos, you get a set of formula assembly-line images, which I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. A bunch of people dissect typical Western logos and make similar images. They are like ghosts of what was once innovative, containing little, if any originality. In the West there is a ‘cutting edge’ of innovation and creativity. By the time this filters down to India it is a very ‘worn and rounded edge’.

In time, when their educational institutions catch up to ours, India and China may catch up in terms of creativity, but when they do there will be two important changes:

1) They will be charging more by then, and

2) There will still be cultural differences that will probably keep most Western design agencies using local talent.

While a chunk of repetitive and low grade creative work will certainly move to China, India and South America, the best quality work will remain with us for a long time yet.